As chapter fifteen opens we find the narrator being rudely awakened from his peaceful slumber by a neighbor in his building banging on their heat pipes. Highly agitated by being awoken in such a manner the narrator casts his gaze around the room and lights upon a small figurine sitting by his door; "the cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro, whose white eyes stared up at me from the floor"(319). Supposedly he's never seen this small bank, even though he's been living in this room for many months. The narrator then, in a fit of rage, dashes across the room, grabs the figurine and starts pounding on the pipe with it. Eventually he hits the pipe so violently that the bank breaks and shatters. In desperation to hide what he's done the narrator gathers up all of the broken pieces, puts them in a bag, and shoves them into his brief-case.
Even before breakfast Ellison has already worked a number of events into the chapter that are rife with symbolism for the picking. For starters there's the matter of his finding this small item in his room in the first place. He's been living in this room for several months, but for some reason this is the first time he's seen it. Before now it's almost as if this small figurine was invisible to him, or somehow hidden. At a very important time in the narrator's life it seems that such a piece of imagery could not simply be coincidence. Only as he is leaving this life to enter a new one where he will be very visible to the public does he see this nic-nac that represents the harsh stereotypes that were forced upon African-Americans. This is an item that the Narrator feels is "self-mocking" (319), it represents the stereotypes that the narrator hates having forced upon him.
But, wait! There's more! As the narrator leaves Mary's house for the final time he decides that he has to dispose of the remains of this small bank he has smashed. He doesn't feel comfortable doing so in Mary's house, however, so he simply decides to toss it at the first trashcan he sees. He does just this, and the trashcan he chooses is one outside of a privately owned house. The response is instantaneous and rather shocking. As soon as he tosses the bag with the trash in it into the can, a door opens from one of the houses and the narrator is accosted by the flaming wrath of a small white woman. Said woman is outraged that the narrator would throw his garbage into their garbage can and orders him to fetch out the garbage as well as saying some rather shockingly hateful and racist things, especially about black people from the south; "I'm sick and tired of having you southern Negroes mess up things for the rest of us" (328). The narrator is shocked and angered by the woman's statements, but complies and fishes the bank out of the stinking trashcan.
A few blocks later, after his anger from the previous encounter has died down some, he decides to attempt to dispose of his garbage once more. This time he simply lets it fall out of his hand while he's waiting at a stop light. He only makes it a couple of blocks, however, before he is stopped again. This time he's accosted by a man who saw him drop the bag and wishes to return the bag back to him. When the narrator attempts to feign ignorance about the bag the man freaks out. He jumps to the conclusion that the narrator must be involved in some illegal activity, and that the bag contains some very dangerous and illegal item. Thrusting the bag back into the narrators arms he runs off, but not before saying "I know what kind of garbage it is.You young New York Negroes is a blip" (330). The narrator decides after this that he will simply throw his garbage into the street, but when he sees the man gesturing wildly at him he decides he'll just have to dispose of it later before the police are called. Before this section ends he decides to shove the contents into his beloved suitcase which is all he has with him.
In this second part of the morning the narrator has these encounters with random inhabitants of New York who literally force him to accept this item, that for him represents the stereotypes of African-Americans that he despises being put under. In addition to simply being forced to accept this humiliating item, the people accosting him keep classifying him under these harsh stereotypes. The woman who yells at him from her house sees him as a disgusting "Southern Negro", and the man who stops him on the street assumes that he's been peddling drugs and that he's involved in some illegal activity. Both people are actually forcing him to take this item that represents racial stereotypes, while at the same time are assigning harsh stereotypes of their own on him. All this time the narrator is leaving his home with Mary to go work for the Brotherhood. By doing so he's trying to escape from a life where he's assigned hateful stereotypes, but can't even escape from this small bank, let alone from the racial stereotypes assigned to him. Eventually he just gives him up and puts this symbol of racism into his precious brief case, which is the only thing he still has that symbolized his original goal in life. An item that he received from the battle royal, which was an incredibly humiliating event where he was working to show off to powerful white men and please them by making a speech. To see him put this broken bank, a symbol of racism and stereotyping which he can't escape, into this brief case that represents his being controlled by the white men, shows a definite connection between the two. Perhaps the narrator still doesn't realize that he's not really escaping from racism and stereotyping, but is just merely hiding it more affectively with his new life.
Reading your post, it reminded me how much I was surprised when the old woman reacted so violently to the narrator putting the package inside her garbage can. She yells at him, "We keep our place clean and respectable and we don't want you...ruining things" (328). The absurdity of her statement, in that he is putting something in a garbage can, filled with rotting swill, and somehow he is still messing it up confounded me. As you pointed out, she is assigning a racial stereotype to the narrator, but I thought it was interesting how she immediately said he was from the South. In multiple places she reiterates how he isn't in his native area, and I wonder if in addition to racial hatred she also hates him because she perceives (correctly) that he is from the South. Then with the man in the street commenting about African-American New Yorkers in particular, I wonder if Ellison is trying to point out that geographic tensions can also play an important role in the creation of general stereotypes, like how when the narrator is still in college, the college people and country people form a lot of stereotypes about each other. The geography separates them, and in doing so also skews their perceptions of each others lives and mannerisms. I think you were right on with the main focus of these scenes, but I think geographic stereotyping is a little interesting side thought.
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